


Legacy

by likeadeuce



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Military, Next Generation, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not often that a cadet specifically requests to spend her first assignment at Briggs."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> Post-series, but no specific spoilers that couldn't be speculated from about halfway through.

On the way to meet her new commanding officer, Elizabeth tried to visualize old photographs of her mother in uniform. Pictures were all she had to go on; Mom's time in Amestrian blues had ended before Liz was born. Her parents had held onto a few -- group shots valued for the other faces they contained, a means of introducing their daughter to her not-quite-uncles – but those weren't the ones Liz thought about. The pictures of Colonel Hawkeye that stuck with her daughter were ones she had found by accident, in old magazine spreads or even history books. Unnamed, uncredited. Unnoticed probably. But undeniably present, shoulders square, chin thrust forward. 

That was the soldier Liz had to be.

She rapped on the door, and a woman's voice barked, "Enter."

Liz stepped into the General's office and. . .speaking of photographs from history books. Olivier Mira Armstrong's long blonde hair had gone completely silver, but it still swept down over her eyes. The regal profile was unchanged in any particular from the famous picture of her on the day that ended the Bradley regime. She had to be nearing mandatory retirement age but, Liz wondered, who would have the nerve to tell that to the Great Wall of the North?

"Cadet Hawkeye reporting for duty," Liz remembered to say, with a smart salute. _Be respectful, behave, and don't give the General any reason to single you out,_ Mom had advised while kissing her good-bye. As though that were so very easy. It would have been easy for _her_ , though. Liz remembered the pictures. Chin up, shoulders square. . .

"At ease," the General said, and even over those few words, her patrician drawl managed to convey a subtext of extreme boredom. "It's not often," she continued, "that cadets specifically _request_ to spend their first assignment at Briggs. Perhaps they are dissuaded by the occasional train car of fresh recruits that freezes to death on its way North. Who can say?"

Liz was reasonably sure that nothing like that had actually occurred. But she was sure there were a lot of ways to die at Briggs, many of them cold and all of them unpleasant. She was also determined not to let Armstrong's joke – threat? – distract her from answering this question she had anticipated and prepared for. "I have wanted to see the North for some time," she began carefully. "Certainly the reputation of your leadership is known all over the country. I spent most of my childhood in the desert, so this is certainly different – although I was in the mountains in the East for a while, and then of course when I started preparatory school we moved back to Central where I gained a lot of experience of military culture before attending the Academy and – " Somewhere along the way she had lost the thread of the carefully prepared argument and how it wound back around to her being at Briggs. It had to be because of the way the general was watching her. Unnerving. "—and of course, this is all very important," Liz concluded and, for good measure, flashed a smile. 

"Excellent." Armstrong nodded slowly. "Begin by kissing my ass, move quickly on to relating personal information that could be of no interest to anyone besides yourself, and, once you've entirely lost track of your own reasoning, conclude with a smile to underscore your conviction that inadequate rhetoric can be compensated for by _charm_. I am quite convinced. You are most certainly that man's child."

 _Well, that was nice,_ Liz thought. _I was enjoying the forty minutes I was here before anybody mentioned him._

"My condolences, by the way," the general added.

Liz froze. "My parents are well. They're vacationing in Creta. I've just had a letter."

"My condolences were on the results of the recent election. I suppose if my side had been beaten as severely as your father's was, I might have chosen to leave the country as well."

"It's a vacation," Liz said, through clenched teeth. "Which they deserve. Every mission, however worthy, inevitably suffers setbacks. The key is to regroup, re-evaluate, and return to the field. In good time."

"Now that sounds like your mother. She, by the way, is the reason I thought there might be some hope for you –" Armstrong read Liz's full name off her dossier, carefully as though seeing it for the first time. "—Elizabeth Hughes Hawkeye." She looked up. "Are you proud of your father?"

"Of course," Liz said, automatically. "We've had our differences –" Screaming, yelling differences on some occasions, most recently about her decision to request placement at Briggs. "—but I have great respect for everything former President Mustang and his administration accomplished for this country." 

"Yet you don't use his name."

"That was my parents' idea." She shifted her foot, wishing her family hadn't put quite so much effort into making her own existence hard to explain. "Dad's idea, I guess. He said I would have enough to deal with, being his daughter, without the burden of his name."

"I see."

Liz sighed. She might as well confront the issue. "They couldn't do anything about my face." For a brief but significant period, Roy Mustang had held a record as the most photographed person in the history of Amestris. Liz _did_ display some of her mother's features: a light dusting of freckles that appeared on the bridge of her nose in the summer; the thickness, if not the texture or color, of her hair, and something in the set of her jaw. But Liz looked a lot _more_ like her father. In her Academy uniform, with her self-imposed crew cut, Liz caused double takes all the time. When a national news story in the previous year had happened to place daughter and father on the front page of million papers, the resemblance had been cemented in the public consciousness.

"To speak frankly, ma'am," Liz added. "It's something of a sore spot." Liz's father would have said to keep that vulnerability hidden. Liz's mother would have said that Liz's father was very bad at taking his own advice. Liz had spent a lifetime watching Roy Mustang fail to conceal his feelings as well as he thought he was doing. She had decided that, sometimes, you might as well just come out with it.

The general's mouth twitched briefly into a smile, and Liz decided she'd done the right thing. "As long as we're being frank," Armstrong said. "Would you care to address certain rumors about your extracurricular activities?"

Liz squared her shoulders. She could do this now. They had won this fight. "Yes, ma'am. It's true that I'm gay," she said. "That's hardly a rumor. I testified before the Parliamentary committee last year, when the regulations came up for change." 

"Did you?" the general said mildly. "You'd think there'd have been something about it in the newspapers." Liz swallowed a reply, belatedly recognizing the sarcasm. "I'm certain your personal life is lovely, I don't care about it, and since there aren't any other women stationed at Briggs besides me and yourself, it will hardly be an issue. The rumor," Armstrong continued, "is that you're a practicing alchemist." 

Liz felt her heart rate rise, but she didn't say anything because the general hadn't asked a question. 

Armstrong sighed, and prompted, "Are you?"

"The application of alchemy to offensive military purposes is strictly forbidden by regulation and by national law."

"Yes," Armstrong said drily. "Every school child is familiar with the Mustang Act. That's why I specified 'extracurricular.' I believe the aptitude is known to run in families?"

"My training, ma'am, has been what it has been. Everything relevant to my military service is disclosed in my records. I can promise you – on my mother's honor, since you probably won't take my father's – I won't cause any problems on that front."

"Problems," Armstrong steepled her fingers. "Cadet, I don't believe you understand. Rules are rules, and laws are laws, but in my experience – one can always find a use for a good alchemist." 

Liz swallowed. She tried to imagine what her mother would do. "Is this a test?" she asked.

"Perhaps," answered the general. "Time will tell. For now I can only promise that, if I ever ask you to do anything -- extracurricular -- I promise there will be a very good reason."


End file.
